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The IRA
Former Member
Posts: 1,876,323 The Mix Honorary Guru
give a poor Oregonian some information here.
the IRA stands for the Irish Republican Army, it is mostly made of Catholics and launches various violent attacks on British establishments. that’s about all I know, but seeing as how I get my news from cable TV. and am not directly effected by this organization most or all of the above could be wrong.
educate me please. editorial, expository, biased, whatever.
the IRA stands for the Irish Republican Army, it is mostly made of Catholics and launches various violent attacks on British establishments. that’s about all I know, but seeing as how I get my news from cable TV. and am not directly effected by this organization most or all of the above could be wrong.
educate me please. editorial, expository, biased, whatever.
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Basically as it stands now the IRA is a criminal gang, not that disimilar to many others. They have their patch and they control the crime which goes on there, they smuggle drugs, extort money....etc.
Oh and theres some politics there too, but not much of it.
Wikipedia is quite a good start if you want to start researching things and Google is your friend.
It that which makes us "laugh" about the fight against terror...
new yorkers pain for my home city of manchester in the north of england to suffer the biggest explosion since the second world in england ...city centre gone ...thankyou new yorkers ...
funny how they can fund the blowing up of my skyscrapers and then get all shocked and tearful when they get some back.
Though I think the peace process in Northern Ireland actually shows that the best way to treat terrorism is with diplomacy. The IRA in the 1970s had nothing to lose, so they blew things up without any thought; now the nationalists have a say in the political agenda, they have something to lose, so it's no coincidence that the IRA have largely regressed into being the criminal overlords of Catholic NI instead of committing terrorism. The same thing would happen in Spain if the Basques received some concessions, and the same would happen in Iraq if the Sunnis were given a say too.
I wouldn't agree entirely, I mean the 2002 the IRA were busted for stealing confidential files from Stormont and breaking into the police HQ in Belfast. Not massive terrorist acts, but still not acceptable activity for an organisation that's meant to be winding down.
Didn't the Marxism come later on in the IRA's history?
The Provisional IRA was established in 1969 as a breakaway group from the old IRA who wanted to stop armed conflict and enter into politics as a marxist party. I don't know how long it took the PIRA to adopt a Marxist ideology as well, but it was certainly before Sinn Fein was created in the early 1980s.
it was founded round the same time as the russian revolution, it didn't have a Marxist mandate at the time but shared the same values, i think the PIRA have one though and yes thats 50 odd years later.
It's still not quite up there with blowing people up, though.
They're a criminal gang now, and part of that is breaking into places and stealing things.
terrorism is more than just "blowing people up", i can almost garauntee that some illegal organisation has mine and Tim's whole life on a file somewhere in a floppy disk, where i live, who my family is, this is terrorizing and intimidating the community is an invisible terror, but fuck them, their power is dying, not totally but i'll shed no tears when it does.
true, there are countless amount of PIRA run estates in newry, belfast and londonderry, even my estate is, i've been warned a few times that if i don't wise up i'll get a beating, a good friend of mine got his knees done in a while back, when you think abut it, if there's a social problem, they deal with it, not exactl ythe society you want to live in.
At times it was little things such as all the police being armed (and as a kid I could never understand why we visited my Dad's relatives on the mainland none of the police carried guns), or being held up at an army checkpoint while they checked we weren't terrorists.
But much of it was more serious. I lost family members to the IRA. The graveyard in the back of our church holds graves of men killed by the IRA. The youngest was just nineteen. A few years ago my Mum counted that she knew close to twenty people murdered by terrorists - ranging from the man who had been her first boyfriend when they were at school (and his brother had been murdered a few years earlier) to someone who'd done some labouring for my grandpa and was murdered in front of his kids because the UVF muddled him up with someone else.
It wasn't politics which made the terrorists give up, but the realisation that over thirty years they had achieved nothing which couldn't have been achieved by the early seventies. All they'd done was leave Northern Ireland more divided than ever and a hell of a lot of widows and kids without parents.
I've heard of people getting their knees done in for joyriding and stuff like that, generally causing a nuisance in the area. But if the police can't stop young teens destroying the area due to lack of evidence the IRA can simply find out who done it and issue their own punishment.
Northern Ireland is actually very wierd to live in, like in certain places the Provos run the show and the ordinary people are too scared to say anything.
hmm...i could wirte a book on it but basically, here's the lowdown, 800 years ago, brits moved to ireland for first time, got control of lands, after a while, protestants form scotland and england settled in ireland, mainly ulster, catholics persecuted all the while, republicans had rebellions throughtout centuries but none by organisations, by 1900's, Socialists like James Connoly and Padraig Pearse organised themselves into group to remove British Imperialism, caled IRB, had rising in 1916, IRA formed after rising, fought british government for new irish state, got part independence, IRA sorta died out, came back during 50's, then during Civil Rights marches of 1968-69, the IRA got dragged into struggle as catholics were still being persecuted, from then on, it became a struggle for independence from the british state. here's a good site
http://cain.ulst.ac.uk
Ahh the number of times people have asked me what the Troubles were about when I've been drunk.......... *take massive breath* "well it all began in 1169..."
Yeah, but how do you ever know when they have done that?
Just because they have put lots of guns in contrete or cut them up and a priest is allowed to watch doesnt mean they have gotten rid of all the guns they have.
Call me naive, but I'll be happy to accept the British and Irish govts word that the IRA have decommissioned to at least a significant extent. The Brits must have infiltrated the IRA enough to know what the arms supplies are like.
I just think that they must have loads of weapons they dont need anymore, they arent fighting a war anymore, so lots of it I'm guessing they dont want.
And of course whats stopping them buy more, they must make quite a bit from all their little 'businesses'.
I dont want to overtly dump on the process though, any guns put out of action is a good thing.