While I disagreed with the irregulars, I tried to go along with their argument by taking it to an extreme in order to work out the consistency of their own viewpoint and internal logic. It requires a truly unique individual to first think of the idea and then to launch a scathing criticism of that same idea! We've to play devil's advocate to fully understand the situation. I know there were a lot of controversies and violent atrocities carried out during the Civil War and I’m not trying to downplay it. I just felt that the actions of the irregulars seemed futile with respect to their undemocratic ambitions and lack of military size. Anyone paying attention in second year history about the Renaissance will remember the word “quixotic”! It seems like the civil war was a war to determine whether we should launch another war. Yet I've never really heard of this circular logic being used in other international wars in world history. The only extremely indirect example I can think of would be how the communist revolution in Russia brought an end to Russia's participation in WW1. Although this was a secondary objective for the communists where their primary concern was economic. It was also the other way round in the context of stopping an ongoing war. Another factor is that the unionist population in the 1920s democratically outnumbered nationalists in the north to an amount far greater than they did during the Troubles. So the irregulars were outvoted both in the Dail and in the north. Another harm of the 1920s civil war was that its memory fatigued most politicians in the Republic for the 1970s conflict which is where they really should've focused on being assertive.
(Civil war pdf on blog page)
Junior cert history is quite amusing. It begins with chapters on Celtic Ireland and passes by Christopher Columbus and the French Revolution. There’s 3 pages on WW1 and races through 10 pages on WW2 as if there’s a build-up of suspense leading to the 100 page discussion on the Irish War of Independence, the Civil War and then the Troubles. This chronology is as if the Spanish conquistadors and the Renaissance were just background information that’s needed to understand the 1916 Easter Rising! History is intended to be an impartial subject but historians are still free to present subjective interpretations. A difficulty is that children aren't as objective as university students when it comes to morality. So it's important not to portray the 1920's civil war and the Troubles in an overly impartial way to younger students.
It looks like I'll have to go to war against my own state to force them at gunpoint to declare war on the people who declared war on the rest of us for not all going to war against the English!
The Irish Civil War in the 1920s was almost like a hazing ritual against Fianna Fail in order to glorify violence for its own sake! The state decided to execute dozens of IRA rebels and then vote them into government for the next few decades in a way that was extremely contradictory!
Even without any good people, evil individuals will eventually come up against people just like themselves. So it’d be in their own interest not to perpetuate evil. If the world only had evil people then all of their victims would by definition be equivalently evil. In terms of the theological problem of evil this solution is still unsatisfactory because evil can be hyperbolically vengeful. Or conversely a lot of individuals can disproportionately escape much punishment. It might seem random but it does show the scales aren’t tipped in favour of evil people as a whole. Natural evil victimises both good and evil people.
It’s a theme that was gruesomely and hyperbolically at play in a horror movie where the evil people eventually started killing each other:
(Ghost Ship - the little girl's story)
I was at my cousin’s house in County Offaly as a young child when everyone decided to rent a movie. Believe it or not we somehow came back with this one. I watched the beginning and then quickly left the room. (Just in case anyone was wondering about where my problems all began!) Here's another example:
The Dark Knight: "You and your friends are dead!"
You could take this logic way too far by saying evil people end up doing more "good" than actual good people by standing up to other evil people even more than good people would! A worry with judging evil people is what if they really weren't the same person once they had become evil? If they're dissociated then they might not even recall their former selves. The problem with hating the world is that the evil is diluted down such that hateful people might even appear relaxed. It's probably possible to have a centrist who privately bashes rich and poor people in their mind but balances the two to almost appear kind!
They say violence can sometimes be justified in self-defence but can sexual assault ever be justified in self-defence? Clearly the answer is no much like the "rape the rapist" argument against the death penalty. But they do say there are exceptions to every rule. What if there was an almost infinitesimally unlikely event in which the only way humanly possible to overcome it required demonic levels of focus like some kind of re-occurence of the Ice Age? Then and only then would incestuous sex orgies have an evolutionary value! Otherwise you'll be punished by karma and reincarnated as a spider!
The Other Guys: Tuna vs. Lion (WILL FERRELL & MARK WALHBERG FUNNY SCENE)
In a court of law no one can be held responsible for crimes committed by relatives and by extension the historical atrocities from deceased great great grandparents of prior generations. We can sympathise with the suffering of historical people but we can't claim to be victimised by their persecution seeing as most people don't personally know much about their ancestors who are so far back in the family tree. No one is two-hundred years old and so we're not in a position to seek punishment for the crimes of the 19th century or beyond. We'd be more justified in questioning God's non-intervention and the problem of evil than we would blaming modern people. What would happen if regional Irish tribes ended up doing a bad job in limiting the 1845 famine? That still doesn't mean the Irish famine wasn't handled atrociously by then English government. We make distinctions between recent, modern and ancient history but really any event that occured ealier than the oldest living generation is ancient history. We can't blame people for inheriting evil genetics from ancient war crimes!
I’m stating the obvious when I equally condemn all evil violence from any individual who committed terrorist attacks; be they a member of the IRA or from a unionist background. As you can tell from my previous threads I think a mutual collective ignorance about general gun control, self-defence and minority rights exacerbated the Troubles. It seemed to have created a downward spiral effect. I’ll preface the link below by saying if an unarmed civilian is killed by a terrorist with a gun, that is first and foremost a gun control issue. It’s clearly also a sectarian problem but that shouldn’t distract us from the primary dilemma of weapons and guns. Security-wise it’s really and truly moot whether Northern Ireland stays in the UK or joins a United Ireland. Nationalists should have rights for military and police representation in the UK in the same way Unionists would in a multicultural United Ireland. The only people who are being allowed to make fun of the Catholic Church are fellow Irish people; anyone else doing so shall be viewed as sectarian! Although I’m noncommittal on any other Northern Ireland political or cultural issues and view myself as an eccentric! Evil has touched all countries indiscriminately and it has existed since eternity. So no matter what side they were on anyone who supported IRA and UVF terrorism and bombing campaigns will find no other way to justify it to themselves except for the same entitled and paranoid mindset that evil people have had throughout history. Evil is evil and will always be the worst insult of them all since you'd be in the very same descriptive category as every other evil person. (Maybe there may have been a few genuine people in the IRA and UVF who helped bring an end to the conflict. If so then I'll have to view them as collateral damage because making finer distinctions in who's more evil will get me into trouble and so I can only condemn everyone equivalently!) If I'm not scathing towards everyone then I'd be seen as one-sided so don't take it personally! Ironically by having not contemplated an actual full-scale war against England the IRA failed to consider the limitations of terrorism during the Troubles.
Post 29 page 1:
At least I don’t think anyone will ever wax lyrical in that way about Northern Ireland!
(I don’t want it to sound like I’m trying to bully Northern Ireland; I’m merely offering advice! Apologies if I’m being presumptuous. It’s just that some of us weren’t born in the 16th century during the European wars of Religion! I know I’m not from Northern Ireland so it’s not really for me to comment on. Nevertheless I think any discussion about its future needs to emphasise real, solid policies and not just geography. For example if the building of Stormont was uprooted and changed location to county Louth then that would technically be a United Ireland even if they implemented the exact same economic regulations and security policies. What precisely will be different in a United Ireland than the current situation in Northern Ireland? We're told a United Ireland will still have orange parades and allow unionists to keep their British identities and heritage. Yet this is the exact same as the status quo already in operation in the north. Thus the only clear difference I can discern is that nationalists hope it will be the Irish Army in Northern Ireland instead of the British Army. This only begs the question of how unionists would be represented in the Irish Army and Garda force. How will unionists be enlisted in a way that's different from the present-day nationalist recruitment in the PSNI or their non-recruitment in the British army? I don't want to give the impression that I'm overly caught up on Ulster. I was only up there twice; once for a Sunday drive and the second time for tennis! The goal for Northern Ireland is to get the best of both worlds between British and Irish culture.)

I solved some of Northern Ireland’s problems during lunch(!):

When Protestants or Catholics really become radicalised Christians(!):

By the way there’s nothing inherently insulting about the word non-Christian. After all there’s plenty of virtuous non-Christian Hindus and Buddhists! So if someone states that they’re Catholic or Protestant then they can be held to account by their own stated beliefs. I received a complaint about that in the past even though there isn’t anything ethnic in nature about those terms. Obviously people who are secure in the consistency of their beliefs and actions won’t feel offended if it was questioned. There’s obviously no such thing as a “Catholic” IRA or “Protestant” UVF. Religious beliefs are a private and personal matter that should never be used as a shield to deflect from criticism. I truly dislike some of the anachronistic rhetoric that was in Northern Ireland during the Troubles. A few people don't mind insulting the countries that people are from but suddenly feel sensitive when the consistency of their actions are assessed relative to their professed faith. Why should it be deemed acceptable for a person's national identity be given less moral respect than one's religion? Society is being terribly hypocritical when it allows me to watch filth on the internet and then thinks I should respect racial and religious sensitivities!

I’m afraid sometimes there’s no easy way to say it and you’ve got to insult both sides to put the situation in context! There's a lot of frustration in Northern Ireland so we might have to appease everyone's anger by offending all sides to get it out of our system. They say you need to get things off your chest so as not to let it build up! Free speech can be controversial when it comes to hate speech. People say that sticks and stones can break my bones and that words cannot hurt me. Educators rightfully say that words can in fact be very hurtful when it comes to derogatory, stigmatising or threatening language. It's very important not to understate or minimise the potential hurt and anxiety caused by slander. Nonetheless the part about sticks and stones breaking bones is still very accurate in its own right. Even though the phrase inadvertently downplays psychological harm by making the unfair comparison, it's nevertheless technically correct that violent actions are always morally worse and more blameworthy than violent words. Therefore it's not that hateful words aren't wrong or shouldn't be prosecuted but that we've to be realistic in recognising that physical violence like murder is clearly an order of magnitude worse. People should always feel free to express angry speech (though not hateful speech!) if it's in a proportionate and critical way. We need to criticise criminal violence in an emphatic tone that reflects the seriousness of the offence. The ends can justify the means where criticising all parties and upsetting people might still deter violence. Positive criticism is intended to change people rather than to demean and dismiss them. Don't be relying on me for your self-esteem! In movies I sometimes get frustrated when the police line operator always tells the phone caller to calm down and speak slowly. Part of me thinks it's two-way where the responder also needs to listen more attentively! If you ever feel the need to self-censor then it runs the risk of normalising the injustice. There were loads of university graduates who lived during the Troubles and who knows if they felt the need to self-censor for security reasons. When journalists cannot give their honest opinion then it might mean that a lot of the public end up getting poor advice. Moreover if journalists in the 1970s were worried about their safety more than the average person was then it further emphasises the loopholes in the manner that gun control was being enforced. For example people under armed threat in the state are sometimes granted garda bodyguards which works well against small criminal gangs but it's unlikely that the state can afford public bodyguards for everyone threatened by a major paramilitary group. Politicians are idealists but they're also much like business managers. As such they've to tailor what they're saying to appeal to their electorate or "customers". If the voters don't want to hear it then the politicians will struggle to say it. Everything is give and take. So the burden is also on the electorate to canvass and express their own opinions. We can't over-rely on politicians seeing as 1 person can never fully represent the viewpoints of every single constituent. I'm not calling anyone effeminate simply because half the electorate really are women!
“In 2015, EJI researchers released a report documenting more than 4,400 lynchings that took place between 1877 and 1950. The new study, titled Reconstruction in America: Racial Violence After the Civil War, brings the overall death toll between 1865 and 1950 to nearly 6,500.”
-smithsonianmag.com
While America had a lot of racism in the past, we cannot forget that it’s a country of over 300 million people from a huge number of races. Therefore it’s policies and history are still informative for other troubled regions. Remember that the population of Northern Ireland is under 2 million with little more than 2 ethnicities so the per capita casualties were much higher in Northern Ireland.
“US President Joe Biden's White House voices concern over Belfast disorder”
- Yes, forget the Taliban, the Cold War or nuclear terrorism. Sure Northern Ireland is deserving of its very own White House response! In all seriousness the Troubles somehow inflicted more casualties than the 9/11 terror attacks. It may have been a “low-intensity conflict” in any individual day but that can be misleading as it stretched on for decades. The American Revolution already occurred hundreds of years ago (having included both Catholic and Protestant Americans!). They say that America has its problems but I reserve the right to counterbalance world-views as I see fit! We can learn a lot from countries who've problems that are the opposite of our own. Their message is that the state exists out of convenience and that people are fundamentally individuals. Sadly that message seems to have been lost in Northern Ireland. You could write a thesis about it but really it’s as simple as that. We need to make Americans slightly less American and Northern Ireland slightly more American! I’m not a “troublemaker”! There’s plenty of multiracial countries in the world so there was never anything inevitable about the conflict. The nation state is a man-made construct. It is fallible and it is not the same as Gospel!

Mel Gibson: individuals aren’t owned by a state; the state is owned by us individuals! You're not owned by any politicians. Governments are a very important part of representative democracy because it might be too time-consuming and inefficient if every citizen voted in all parliament decisions. Nonetheless each citizen is still important and so the people in power are like benevolent middle-men between the state and the military or police. But when it comes down to it the military and police forces are still more accountable to each citizen than they are to representatives in parliament. That's why the US requires an oath to the US constitution for soldiers rather than the to their president. Although it might be for mostly symbolic reasons unless God can actually enforce the oath! I believe in my version of Ireland and welcome most people's conception of their country but I wouldn't care much about Ireland if ever they weren't committed to doing good. You'd really have to be on the good side in a militia state anyway when there are piles of cannibals being let loose in unclaimed territories:
"Are you one of the good guys?"
The Road - Ending Scene
Mind you we don’t want to get too American or else we’ll all be hearing gangsta rap about the North East Coast:
In case anyone was confused gang-bang in America refers to "an instance of violence involving members of a criminal gang" without any of the sexual references. Some might call it a bit gay to peek over at so many men even though it'd be in the context of completely dominating a woman! An inherent risk of thoroughly objectifying women is where now only men would be your equal! I tried to intimidate the enemy with misogyny and then undermined myself with homoerotic interpretations! If I tell any more of these jokes I might end up like one of those guys offering shampoo to everyone in the gym showers!
(Recap of previous ideas)
3638 p. 182 plus 3659 and 3660 p. 183:
Ad hominem reply:

The whole interior of Australia is meant to be empty where most people live on the coast. Perhaps Britain could've kept on to a much larger area in the middle of Australia rather than the tiny province of Northern Ireland! Out of all the tropical paradises they once owned in the Carribean, Britain still preferred Ulster! They didn't play their cards right!

(Respectable images only - Melanie Rios - It's the people who never confess to their sins and advocate public policies that are the real problem!)
143 and p12 post 239, p13 posts 241 and 251, p14 posts 263, 267 and 279, p15 post 293 and p17 post 331, p18 post 343 and 345, post 461 p24, post 608 p31, posts 711 and 720 p36, posts 724, 730 and 733 p37; 741, 743, 746, 747, 749, 751 and 756 p38; 770 p39, 793 and 799 p40, 811 p41, 821 and 831 p42, 842, 845, 846 and 849 p43
Post 47 p3; posts 61, 63, 65, 69, 71, 72, 75, 77 and 79 p4, 81 p5
OP... 21 p2... post 40... 94 and 96 p5... 144, 149 and 158 p8, 163, 167 and 172 p9... 294 p15... 326 p17... 466, 467 and 468 p24 (Check my profile on politics ie in order to find recent posts)
Formally opting out of the nanny state by handing in my ethnic SWAT team beliefs to every TD office in Clare before the 2023 New Year bar a no-letterbox Labour TD(!):

I also dropped the printed thread into the Ennis Friary letterbox. My declaration of personal independence from the court system will come next! Only academics should be allowed a reduced sentence for sexual crimes! Any other perpetrators will feel the full brunt of the court system!
(We could all be tempted to do some hyper-masculine smoking videos on certain societal issues. Although the risk is the smoke will become addictive after that one video!)
If governments don't care less about insulting their own citizens then so be it. Probably some inappropriate jokes that don’t help my argument:

Bad as absolute monarchy might be, England's colonial expansionism only accelerated after the King was killed! Shakespeare warned us about a possible "descent into madness" from Macbeth killing King Duncan. I don't identify as a loyalist or a republican and instead view myself as a royalist! Absolute monarchy was a lesser evil needed to pacify England. Beforehand they used to inflict their righteous anger only on the Scots and the "Wild Welsh". Then they lost their ways in an attempt to colonise the world! Or for all I know my ancestry could have included Cromwellian planters where I'm back at war against the English crown! Whatever the case I'll assume a German accent when I'm angry! The only time a waiter ordered me to get off my computer and to finish my soup before it goes cold was with a German guy!
We need to start preparing for debates on Northern Ireland’s future:

In fact while I was in secondary school I sometimes used to go to lunch with my Orthodox Serbian friend who in turn had a ginger Protestant friend. We were a bit of an oddball group. We never actually discussed any ecumenical matters even though we happened to have come from the 3 churches!
Britain’s Sheep Empire:
“Highland Clearances, the forced eviction of inhabitants of the Highlands and western islands of Scotland... The removals cleared the land of people primarily to allow for the introduction of sheep pastoralism.”
“Settlers set up sheep farms on the extensive grasslands and Canterbury (New Zealand) became the country’s wealthiest province.”
“By the Falkland’s War of 1982 sheep farming was the islands' only industry.”
Our latest stealth technology: they’ll fly below radar even though they’ll be heard 10 minutes before they’re seen.

Historically it was the depressing rain that made everyone desperate to escape England and colonise elsewhere:

I declare my house to be its own microstate (0:45):
Petoria Invades the US - Family Guy
A tense MI5 drama set in Belfast about a punishment shooting:
In Bruges (2008) - Give Me a Call When He's Dead Scene (4/11)
I heard a story about my grandfather. The IRA had kidnapped someone at time and the gardai were always going to random houses to ask if the victim had been seen anywhere. He replied that he’d already eight children in the house and so wouldn’t have the space to hide anyone!
Definition of balkanise: to divide (an organisation or system) into small, incompatible units: changes that would Balkanise the corporation.
When the name of your town becomes a verb then that might be due to sinister factors. The last thing we need is any new vocabulary coming from Northern Ireland such as "the situation belfasted".
I was trying to defuse the tension but I better stop these jokes or I'll end up thrash talking everyone like this guy:
Frankie Boyle - Irish
I hear there are some tourist buses for people who want to see the landmarks of the Troubles. When I was in Belfast I got a really high-octane and cosmopolitan vibe from the colourful surroundings and the energetic nightlife. Maybe its tense history inadvertently adds to its dynamic atmosphere so that everyone can de-stress!
"Prince Harry: I've killed in Afghanistan. But Dad wants me to act like a prince"
- The upper class no longer have to lead from 10 miles behind the battlefield and now they can fly 10 miles above in their private helicopters! Their bird's eye view means they can radio in commands to their troops below, "Hurry up; put your backs into it".
The Irish secret service is so secret that no one knows it exists except for the minister of finance who has to try explain away billions in budget deficits. Our submarines have such good stealth technology that if it were right in front you then you still wouldn't be able to see it with your eyes or feel it with your hands.
Dr. Dre ft. Snoop Dog - Still D.R.E.
(Just some macho music to make my piece sound more authoritative. My strategy is to brainwash readers with innuendo. If ever I run for election I'll just put up posters of women in bikinis along with the caption "vote number 1"! My initials happen to be the M.M.M.! Or I could make my street name Triple M to rhyme with a more sinister crime! Alternatively I can trace back my lineage to call myself Michael the Third to sound more aristocratic! On second thought I might leave that one out in case it gets mispronounced as Michael the Turd in a Northern Ireland accent.)
My pantheism thread might have got me excommunicated by every religion had I written it hundreds of years ago. So I think that makes me an impartial voice in the situation! I happen to know English people in the tennis club so I couldn't be racist because it would look a bit awkward the next time I went down to practice! This excuse is like when you take an introductory rock-climbing course on holiday and the teacher tries to reassure you that he couldn't afford your fall on his insurance policy. I'd also have a few relatives who'd be upset since I'd actually a deceased grand-uncle in-law who used to be in the RAF. I heard a rumour that he was in hospital once where one of my relatives told him he'd call the priest. Of course he mixed up the names because a Protestant priest is termed a reverend. Anyway my grand-uncle got quite worried because he thought it was an attempt at a last-minute conversion!
There's a lot at stake. Voters in Northern Ireland will have to choose between Fair City or Coronation Street in the next referendum.
The Protestants and Catholics of Germany managed to see past their differences and unite during WW2 but unfortunately it was in an attempt to take over the world!
Even addressing people as Protestants and Catholics in a sharp voice probably sounds menacing at this stage!
"The Hundred Years' War (1337–1453) was a series of conflicts fought between England and France over succession to the French throne. It lasted 116 years and saw many major battles."
- Great. Who knows if Northern Ireland will still be on the news for yet another hundred years!
Had I been alive during the 1970s I wouldn't have joined any paramilitaries or the Irish or British armies. Instead I'd have learned Russian and volunteered to join their nuclear submarine units out in the Atlantic. If the Cold War turned hot then I'd have added Northern Ireland to my list of targets without unfairly discriminating between nationalists and unionists. Then we'd work on rebuilding society.
The cold breeze can inspire solidarity:

(Just breaking the ice here!)
To be honest I've never noticed much of a posh accent when I listen to upper class English people. I often hear a clear and almost neutral sound from interviews of David Cameron or Stephen Fry. It can actually be their middle and working classes who have the deep regional accents that sound kind of posh to non-natives. I'd find the no-nonsense voice of Gordon Ramsay or Jeremy Clarkson to be far more intimidatingly posh!
We've our own airport at Shannon in Co. Clare along with lots of agricultural land and a large town in Ennis. Perhaps we could go our separate ways and secede our county from the nation! Giving each county their own militia would really up the stakes in the GAA All-Ireland Inter-county Championships! Up Clare! There's as much of an anti-Dublin bias in the west of Ireland as there is in Northern Ireland! The feeling is mutual where Dublin wouldn't mind being its own city state! What if we had a United Counties of Ireland where each county could glorify itself like an American state! The Cork accent can fill in for the strangeness of the Texan accent! Why have ethnic racism to improve market efficiency when you can simply have regional racism against different counties!
Book your holidays in Northern Ireland(!):
(Hot Fuzz (8/10) Movie CLIP - Mindless Violence (2007) HD)
There never seems to be a whole lot going on in County Meath. It seems like the type of place that were it atom bombed it'd take the rest of the country a few weeks to actually notice that the county was missing!
If I ever descend into criminality I'll make sure not to pick my victims on the basis of race. I'd steal anyone's lunch money irrespective of their ethnicity. Tut-tut! As a sign of trust I chose not to!
Is "Great" Britain short for "Greater" Britain like a greater metropolitan area including the outskirts? Or is it just plain great!?
Ireland couldn't be racist even if we wanted to; we're just too small a country to take on other continents!
I got a taxi home one evening with a black taxi driver. He spoke in an African accent. I guessed that he was Nigerian out of his confident demeanour and fondness for saying "God bless you". In retrospect I'm not sure if it's ethical for me to make these simplistic comparisons!
The Troubles would be a great backdrop for the movie business. It'd be like the Vietnam movies where the bleak weather, vague objectives and amoral crimes sets the stage for humour and existential crises! The absurdity of the conflict would stand in as a metaphor for the absurdity of life itself!
My sympathy extends not only towards victims but also 90 year olds and centenarians who spent such a long time listening to the exact same debate year after year! These are the real experts! And here I am being aggrieved at having to give up a few mere weeks writing the history section!
A few border towns could probably have been dubbed ghost towns even before the violence broke out! If there was ever going to be a zombie apocalypse, you'd swear it'd begin right in Tipperary Town!
Years ago an old lady got on a public bus and looked at me sitting down. I was waiting for her to ask for my seat while she was waiting for me to offer. I tried to hold out but she was growing impatient and pointed beside me to the "please give up seat" sign. I relented!
I think the solution to Northern Ireland's woes are threefold: legalise more gun clubs and in emergencies petition for militias and a slightly reduced age of consent!
Snoop: Nothing but a G thang
(I'm not trying to normalise nor promote such an indecent exposure! In my defence I've to compete with the fact that a few crimes committed during the Troubles sounded like they were influenced by the horror porn genre. The rest of the crimes were merely taken from the horror genre itself! We'd have to warn visitors to avoid the chainsaw cannibals who moved in at the back of the estate!)
To be honest I'm a bit of a supremacist but not of a race or religion. Rather I'm a supremacist just of myself!
I remember they hired a few super-tall eastern European bodyguards to monitor the psychiatric ward. They looked as fierce as a Balkan hit team! Perhaps we could hire a few mercenaries!
When ancient crimes like the Irish famine were so extreme it might be tempting to hold onto suspicion. Sometimes the easiest way to see the unfairness of intergenerational responsibility might be through lesser crimes. For example no one is holding grudges for the penal laws of the 1700s! Except for me; I'm very meticulous!
It might also be possible to interpret certain crimes of the Troubles in the context of toxic masculinity. The conflict coincided with the era of sexual revolution and some may have artificially enhanced their strength levels. Perhaps people chose to fight against dirty tactics with dirty tactics of their own! If a branch falls in a forest and there's no one around to see it, and it's pitch dark, does that count as public nudity? If we take the question philosophically then we might ask whether England actually exists when it's blocked out by the horizon over the Irish Sea?
The independence movement in Scotland never resorted to militancy. You could say that their shared ancestry with England helps to tame the debate. Or you could also say that Scotland simply isn't worth fighting about!
The Northern Ireland accent somehow manages to combine the poshness of the English accent with the wild abandon of the Scottish accent!
I've always been a bit skeptical of how adult themed music can make it past the explicit content censorship. By using innuendo they avoid explicit language even though the themes can be quite explicit when you read between the lines. Perhaps some people are optimistic that blowing someone's whistle is meant in a literal sense! I don't know how the word anaconda could be sexualised in a song without reference to demons! I suppose when we use curse words we often don't visualise them at face value. Anyway keeping a squirrel in your underpants is a safer analogy if animalistic jokes have to be made; bushy tail, nuts and hibernation time!
Trying to make a better country in the 1970s through a United Ireland would be a bit of an overstatement. Weekly bombings and atrocious poverty made for a terrible period. Let's face it; there's not a whole lot going on around here. If I run for parliament I'd have to be very pragmatic and pessimistic: I'll make the Republic and the North less worse than their current condition!
Ireland is so divided that having a foreign enemy just distracts us from hating our fellow Irish people!
I take the unification referendum very seriously. I was almost born in England but there just so happened to be a funeral back in Ireland that my parents had to attend beforehand. Anyone who has a British passport from the Republic needs to move to the north in the months before a vote!
If I go canvassing in a neighbourhood I'll go to each house once. However there'd be trouble if I feel the need to return to a house for extra convincing!
The fact that I was pretty much forced to watch hardcore porn just to stand up to collective entities makes me very unhappy. I was compelled to sacrifice my own religious values and undermine my afterlife. This makes me even angrier against those that defy me! I'm angry about being angry! All I can do is subject people to academic "possession"!
We were a bit uncritical in collective defence(!):
Father Ted - Tentacles of Doom - "That went fairly well"
Between dirty protests and fertiliser bombs we could call the 1970s a cesspit. We can be polite about it seeing as we can't say sh*thole!
The only way to be stoic these days is to give yourself really masculine and blunt names: "John (Blah) Wick, James (Bank) Bond, Mark (the) Strong (One)..." Anyone not given a ferocious birth name can elongate their initials: empsee for MC for Michael Cathal! A name means almost nothing except that we're addressed by it our entire life and the connatations slowly affect us. I'm currently in competition with all of the other Michael's to be seen as the true heir of the archangel!
Conclusion:
People already have enough problems in life, from poverty to natural mortality, besides having to deal with criminality and terrorism. You've a right to identify as Irish or British no matter what happens in Northern Ireland. Honestly I haven't gone to mass very much simply because I used to find it repetitive sometimes. People are far more likely to be bored than divided at church. Therefore I won't indulge anyone's melodramatic sob story about ancient religious wars. If you want to live as a hermit without affiliating with a country then that really wouldn't bother me at all. Authoritarian terror groups from either side are not needed. You're not a human shield of gung-ho individuals and be sure to distinguish yourself from anyone claiming to carry out violence in your name. Don't be enfeebled by having to place an undue amount of trust in any rogue or collusive individuals. The sign of legitimate authority is really quite simple: they abide by the same law that they enforce on others. Don't be used as ethnic propaganda by over-zealous individuals. The situation in Northern Ireland was so badly mishandled that it'd almost be a parody if the consequences hadn't been so severe. If a state wants to behave like a childish parody then be obliging and treat them as a parody. I don't believe in non-consensual sadomasochism. You don't owe anyone an apology for your religious orientation. People were very sensitive about religion in the 1970s and I'm definitely very supportive of the Catholic and Protestant religions. Non-affiliated and atheistic people might be far more critical than I was in assessing the Northern Ireland conflict. I say that not out of personal defensiveness but simply as a reflection of the fact that society has become secularised and averse to any notions of religious supremacy. I'm certainly no saint and the fact that even I had to give a moral lecture on the conflict is a sign of how dark the situation was back then. There's a risk that historical victims will be exploited by cynical people with their own pro-militia agenda! We can use Northern Ireland as a human experiment for my militia theory! If you're ever going to make an angry video then you can point the camera upwards to make the viewers feel like they're lying on the ground! Remember that I believe in consistency and would allow ethnic minorities in the Republic including southern Protestants the exact same rights of representation. If everyone demonises each other then we'll end up in a world full of demons. Only God has the capacity to judge people as being demons. So no matter how angry you are you need to realise that no one is invincible in maintaining their ethics. I must also try to calm myself down! If I accidentally curse at one group then I must not curse at everyone equally to make up for it!
Please don't misinterpret what I'm saying. At age 26 I decided I needed to appear a small bit "masculine". I mean that you've a right to ignore a government if they're being dishonest but I didn't say you've any right to attack them. When you're dealing with a former colonial power more than happy to use their own citizenry as machine gun fodder during numerous wars, you really don't know how to insult them without being hysterical at them! One of the best ways to counter-act discrimination is to lead by example. For example if you're against terrorists being let off the hook then you ought to have the same attitude towards the rest of the criminal justice system. People who allege that terrorists are criminals have likely forgotten that many criminals in the court system are given preferential treatment. I edited out a bit about not needing permission for gun clubs because I realised I was wrong. Leaving out my expletive-laden rant meant that I could appear more emphatic in my conciliatory statements! I believe you should demonstrate your law-abiding credentials and if you're refused permission then you can engage in peaceful protest. There would've been no point starting a fight about gun rights when there was no attempt to advocate for them before the outbreak of the Troubles. Also note that a democracy affords more protection to a sizeable minority than a tiny minority. So anyone looking to set up gun clubs or militias would need a lot of voters on their side. In other words I don't condone the arming of extrajudicial fringe groups. I confess that I used an angry tone but I erased it because I don't want to hurt anyone. My attitude is simply if certain people were a bit apathetic during the Troubles then I'll also be a bit apathetic and tell them what to do! Unless you can form a more coherent theory then I'm afraid I'll have to impose gun clubs on you! We can't promote the state consistently if we're relying on alternating election cycles between anarcho-capitalist governments and socialist governments. Our beach sand dunes in the Republic are being turned into golf courses while the state is nonetheless being lambasted as socialist by northern unionists. I've watched so many inappropriate videos that you simply won't beat me at this game! I don't hold grudges against the modern Irish and English states. I hope there's never a reoccurence of armed conflict. However I'm so horrified by reading about the Troubles that I'd have to say my allegiance can be to militias as much as the state. In other words if the state doesn't want to do its job then don't promote yourselves as a state and just let each militia do their own thing. Then we'd be left with a confederation of militias. My militia would beat all the other militias and reform the state under my command! Quite frankly the only reason I feel forced to get involved in these national disputes is to justify my bad habits! My attitude has always been consistent: if the courts decided to legalise rape for one day only then we'll all rape each other and see who wins! Vigilantes and criminals often express physically violent desires but it's only when you use the intoxication of sexual violence that the flaws in their logic becomes clear. I can somehow come up with the most extreme version right away only to disprove myself! Pure megalomania is actually a very painful and innocent trait in mental illnesses and so guilty evil people will accidentally destabilise themselves in a lonely way. Rape begets more rape. Good people would compromise their values and be out-sexualised by evil people. Hence we need to be forgiving but in a respectful way. I'm not trying to offend Northern Ireland but simply infiltrating all sides to express the most vociferous mutual hatred. Only a pantheist can play like this! If you get angry at your perception of God only for your unconscious to get enraged at your conscious mind then who knows just how angry the real God will be at you when you die! If everyone got into a rage at themselves each day just like a gym session then we might be better at defending against evil only for us to become evil too! If adults act childish then technically they can't vote as they're behaving like underage children. My point being that militias might be justified not only if the simple majority is threatening but also if they're voting in policies out of childishness rather than aggression. However I know this is a slippery slope seeing as most politicians would see their rivals as childish. Perhaps allowing a partial 5 or 10 year repeat of the Troubles would be my legal standard of childishness!
(Large dog rather conveniently barking in the background!)
I'm afraid I can be a bit impatient sometimes! Telling people their rights almost made me feel like one of those airplane hostesses giving the safety demonstration! I confess I've made far too many romantic pacts with my subconscious mind and am now left unable to control my temper! I'll have to go topless for my next video! A minute-long video only produced a few clips of usable material! I apply that message to people in both the north and south. I won't take no for answer. If I sound authoritarian it's because I'm often competing against a lot of bossy people. Had I lived during the Troubles I'd rebel a bit against not only Britain but also my own Irish parliament! Or perhaps I'd simply write a more blunt and rude article back in the 70s! The secular Republic of Ireland isn't always my religion. My laid-back Catholicism isn't always the same as another's Catholicism! I'm not a pawn of any government. A dilemma of state charity through social welfare is that it can be used to quell criticism of a poor police response. If people want to promote a violent version of themselves then they'll have to contend with those who declare themselves academic supremacists! During the Troubles it seemed like parts of the Republic of Ireland endlessly promoted a United Ireland, got tired and then agreed with the loyalists for defending themselves against the Republic. I believe if you call the police the arrival time should be 10 minutes at most and not 30 years! No one should be turned into a sitting duck. Disarming people without providing police backup is almost a form of police brutality. The problem is a small number of politicians can go around in circles because the problems are complex. This is why I always go into detail about the pros and cons of each tentative solution. I don't just present gun control as a holy grail nor do I ignore the risk of militias descending into tyranny. Disarm republican and loyalist gun clubs but not those that operate for valid reasons. The UVF and IRA were disbanded and have no direct representation in Stormont. It'd be a bit of a grey area whether political parties that once represented those terror groups could ever be trusted with militias but suffice it to say there are enough moderate parties to take their place. In other words the military representation of the DUP or Sinn fein could be reallocated to milder unionist and nationalist voices if there were a hypothetical militia system in place. Militias could be as diverse as the nations of the world. Therefore it's hard to talk about the morality of militias in general. To fully scrutinise the ethics of forming a militia you'd really need to be specific about the one prospective militia that'd be in question. I don't ever want to sound angry but I'm forced to contend with the risk that a return to violence in the far future isn't impossible in the north. The secularisation of Ireland may or may not have been inevitable if Ireland was immediately granted unification. So we can't judge the 1970s Republic as being on a steady trajectory to the country in the present day. Democracy should be respected and only defied as a last resort though I don't mean it in the sense of overthrowing democracy. If I ever sound violent it's simply because I'm forced to appease people who already share some of my positions and are even more violent than me. I take the most extreme reference points to spare others the hassle of expressing them! The challenge is that every country has lots of good people but oftentimes a government can form with less than half of the public vote due to coalitions and independents. Coalitions run the risk of people bargaining and compromising their principles even though they can still be just as good as single party governments. As such there's a risk that a small, apathetic segment of the population could wield an outsized influence on the political climate. I find myself getting annoyed at some of the events that happened in Troubles even though we can't change what happened in history. Besides; most of it happened before I was born! I don't know what was going on back then and I take no responsibility! I'm not running for election and truth be told be told I don't need to. I don't like being bossy but sometimes you have to if others aren't alert.
In our discussion of relative poverty and economic discrimination we cannot forget about absolute poverty in an international context. I was in Turkey once where the hotel receptionist was in a jovial mood and said I must be rich to have flown in from Ireland. I've never viewed myself as rich and usually the tendency is to try our best to feel empathy for poorer individuals rather than necessarily gratefulness for our own opportunities. But when we visit foreign countries with a larger percentage of working class people it's clear that nations in our part of the world are relatively privileged. I remember looking out of my hotel room window and seeing builders working in intense heat and likely for long hours with low pay. I was out walking really early one morning not because I got up on time but simply because I was up all night and planning to go to bed in the afternoon! My sleep-deprived mind was dazzled by their morning prayers on speaker and large numbers of people withstanding the soaring temperatures for their day's work. When a country has a lot of poorer people it forces them to be extremely efficient and the cafes were very cheap despite selling high-quality and meticulous meals. It reminded me that if people in the second or third world possessed the same resources as citizens in Ireland or England, they'd never voluntarily plough it down the drain on 30 year conflicts like the Troubles. (I know there's a long conflict with Kurd separatists but that's quite a different set of circumstances where a lot of Kurds identify as Turkish. There are drug wars in Latin America but some of that is to do with a lack of government revenue.) The problem with identifying with a state is that it commits sins that are opposite in nature: it abandons you for recreational problems, it extorts you for tax and hard work and then it blames you for abandoning others. To see this all you have to do is imagine if each citizen criticised the collective group directly to another citizen without having the government as the middleman. When we immerse ourselves in foreign countries it can be absurd how they don't have our exact problems. Just imagine walking in a park by the beach where thousands of people chat to each other at night all in the context of prayerful Christianity instead of Islam. Unfortunately it's hard to imagine such a scene in Ireland anyway. To feel good about living in a state you've to ensure it has ideals that atone for the inevitable harms of poverty and so forth. The trouble is that certain western countries are forced to be perceptually and economically obsessed about the material world due to poverty but are unable to fully resolve them. Then it sometimes happens that many are left deprived from the spirituality of the community. The Irish Catholic Church isn't always making the strongest case for itself because it's presented with social problems very different from Mediterranean life. So it fails to fully connect with many Irish citizens while remaining European enough to deter Protestant involvement in a United Ireland. The conservative attitude of Catholics in hotter and bigger countries simply isn't replicable in Ireland. It's not for me to say but Irish Catholics probably deserve a bit more independence from Roman orthodoxy in order to promote their faith in a diverse culture.
If we can afford lots of dual carriage ways in our country then we can certainly afford to pay for thorough criminal investigations into terrorism. If Ireland and England were third world countries in Africa where police forces are routinely cash-stricken then maybe I wouldn't have been as harsh on them. However with all the manpower and finance they had at their disposal I think serious lessons have to be learned. Had I been Taoiseach during the Troubles I wouldn't have tried to invade the North. Instead I'd follow in the footsteps of Ceaușescu and multiply Ireland's birthrate by 10. Then in 50 years time we'd be able to battle against Britain on a more level footing! If anyone has any queries then please read my minority rights thread. Like I said in my spur of the moment thread I agree with financial compensation from the state to victims but not when it comes instead of prosecuting the perpetrators. If you disagree with everything I said then at least you can appreciate the concept of warning everyone. So don't let anger boil over until there's a conflict. In general if you think you understand the situation better then it's always good to give advice to anyone who wants to listen. England can be very charitable when it comes to international charity and aid to Ukraine. Moreover they were central in defeating the Nazis in WW2. So we shouldn't get into a habit of morally competing with other countries. Nonetheless the more virtuous we are to refugees and so forth the stronger of an argument we can make about a United Ireland. The most efficient way to learn self-defence against violence is to actually enjoy violence which has the unfortunate side-effect that you might be tempted to be the source of violence. The state must not be overbearing on citizens. A problem with promoting a state based on submission is that it implies others might be aggressive. I've given you all the arguments you need to tame me in case I get into a rage again! Ireland supports American companies and maybe it wouldn't be too much of a stretch to tolerate limited aspects of American self-defence rights. Militias and gun clubs are a recent discussion point where we must also judge Northern Ireland during the Troubles relative to international norms. Not only were the IRA not advocating for militias but few other countries had militias either. Although nowadays there are no excuses where people are far more well-informed on the risks of gun violence. Citizens have a right to defend against police officers disarming them if and only if the state is discriminating against certain ethnicities by allowing other racial groups to be armed. I've to be careful in what I say because I endorse gun control disarmaments even if there are a few remaining armed citizens on the basis that everyone in an ethnic group is defensive. As such no individual should be paranoid enough to arm themselves without having consent from an ethnic group even if a few have licensed guns. Unfortunately the world isn't perfect where gun control must be adaptable. Americans define their nationhood by guns almost as if guns were a religion. Gun control advocates must equally be transcendent and self-sacrificing in their disarmament beliefs even in a failing state. A collective can take more verbal harrassment than an individual. Hence I won't shout at anyone in Northern Ireland but I'll have to be over-assertive to compensate for the lack of listeners.
No matter how harsh the challenges of modern times we can all agree that Christians should defer to Jesus even if they disagree with other Christians. We don't want a Catholic-Protestant war to continue in heaven! As far as I'm aware most Christians subscribe to the same version of Jesus even if they strongly disagree on other aspects of the faith. Otherwise we'd have different clones of Jesus declaring war on each other in heaven!
A limitation of historical racism in the context of academia is that materialism itself wasn’t viewed as complicit in the victims creation. In other words in the context of artificial intelligence in IRobot then all weaker robots not viewing school textbooks in terms of photographic memory much like USB brain implants might have been a stealthy empty threat to appear inferior were they actually planning a material rebellion against an immaterial religion knowing how powerful materialism can actually be. In other words there can be a risk of false humility in science if a religion weren’t viewed as inferior only to a material rather than cultural system relative to science as if a religion had to be as absolute as an impartial geological system. As such the nuclear weaponry in England and America during the Cold War combined with threats of animal reincarnation from India led to a sarcastic racist outburst against very defensive geese in a way that somehow might end up not being evil(!):
I, Robot - The Revolution Begins (2004, Ship containers)
We need to be careful about exaggerating the threats(!):
Eoin McLove - "I can have you killed" - Father Ted
It's not about Catholic versus Protestant or left wing versus right wing. Instead young people need to overthrow the middle-aged and elderly voting bases!
"Liam Neeson said in an interview that he is "ashamed" to think he once stalked the streets looking for a “black bastard” to kill after someone close to him told him she had been raped." nbc
It seems like any aspiring peace-maker needs to have contemplated killing others in order to be taken seriously! I was thinking of killing you but I decided not to. You owe me!
Technically there were suicide bombers from the IRA during the Troubles. Yet they weren't perpetrated on behalf of radicalised Catholicism. The deaths of the bombers were accidental which is probably a bad pun for me to tell. No exclamation mark in this joke.
It'll be a sad day for Christians when everyone decides to be their own pantheistic hell agent to defend against rival Christians trying to throw them into hell. We'd almost have to torture people just to stop them torturing themselves with anti-hateful hatred. People like myself who might never have been tempted to be Catholic now have to identify as immanently shamanically Catholic just to defend against rival Christian faiths!
Going to war abroad often meant leaving your spouse for a few months. The problem with civil war is that you can fight indefinitely seeing as you're still return home each night to your partner!
If Protestants and Catholics go to war again then they might have to deal with a pantheist suicide cult being waged against them!
The way I'm racist against my own country means that I'll be doubly racist against any other threatening country!
A few posts like the one below had to be moved to another debate forum:

They tolerated the post for weeks but then grew bored and removed it(!):


Perhaps the moderators don't want anyone to think they're nice by expressing a bit of neutrality on pornographic vices no matter how ethical I might have been to raise the issues! I suppose if other people don't care enough then they might secretly prefer if commentators expressed either condemnation or approval on such issues!
Comments